Auto Ramblings

By Lloyd Frazier

This year has been a roller coaster of a ride for the US auto industry.  To end the year, GM is looking at a major recall of about 313,000 vehicles.  The recall was the result of a faulty seal on the rear axle pinion which provides power to the wheels.  The leaky seal could lead to the drivewheel jamming up and locking while the vehicle is being driven, possibly causing the driver to lose control.  Not a great way to close the year for GM here in the states.  However, they had a banner year in China, selling over 1 million vehicles. 

Daimler-Chrysler divorced the Chrysler nameplate and it was sold to a private equity firm, Cerberus, which renamed the company Chrysler, LLC.  The jury is still out as to whether Cerberus can pull Chrysler, the distant third place domestic automaker, out of its doldrums.  Cerberus says “Chrysler has ample liquidity” and “are fully funded with working capital to meet present and future needs and objectives.”  Chrysler’s revamped mini-van was supposed to be a big hit but has not pulled the numbers as was expected.  Honda’s Odyssey was the favorite family hauler for American consumers this year.  Ford and GM abandoned the mini-van market for the 2008 model year with no future plans to revive their past models.

Ford is trying to make a comeback.  They hired a new CEO, Alan Mulally, in fall of 2006.  For 2007, Mulally has started to make some needed changes at Ford.  In 2008, we will see if he is really making an impact.  Ford has relied on truck sales to keep them afloat and has not seen a payback this year.  With the overhaul of GM’s light truck line, the Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra, taking a big bite out their share of sales, as well as Toyota’s newly redesigned Tundra,  they must rely more on their other products to keep them afloat.  The F150 gets a redesign in 2009 to hopefully recoup lost sales.  Their mid-size model failure, the Five-Hundred, was re-released as the Taurus.  The Taurus was a big success for them in the past. Ford hopes to bring back former customers to their showrooms once again.

Cars and Crossovers outsell Trucks and SUVs this year.  Trucks and SUVs have taken a big hit due to higher fuel costs.  American consumers are looking for more fuel sipping options which the domestics are having a hard time providing.  The rest of the world, especially Asia, is quickly filling the demand.  Toyota leads the pack with a well rounded lineup of cars and crossovers.  We will probably see Toyota take the crown as the #1 sales leader in 2008, here in the US and worldwide.

Toyota is very close to making their 2007 target of 200K units sold for their newly redone Tundra.  At the beginning of December, they were at 177K units sold.  They have been throwing a pile of cash and incentives on the hood to get the job done.  They may finally overtake GM for good in 2008.  They were running neck-to-neck all of 2007 with GM keeping their crown for the year.

2008 promises to be a very interesting year for the auto industry.  New manufacturers in China are set to thrust more, better quality, low-cost products on to the already  overcrowded world scene.  The domestic Big-Three have to focus on their car lineup and how to meet the demand better than they have in the past.  Reliability and fuel economy have to be their main focus for 2009 and beyond if they want to continue to be a major player in the US.  Technologies such as electric, hybrid and hydrogen will make more advancements, as well.  Stay tuned…its going to be fun to watch!

By David C.

Note: AutoRamblings.com welcomes another contributor to our growing blog.  David C. hails from the great northwest and has keen insight into the state of the automotive world.  We enjoy bantering back and forth about issues of the past and present in the ever fascinating world of automobiles.  Welcome David.

Smog pumps and related emission control devices were a disaster for the auto industry, but they only have themselves to blame.   For 20 years their only answer to making cars ‘better’ was to make them bigger with bigger engines.   Of course, bigger cars and bigger engines mean bigger profits. It’s a lesson that Detroit has failed to learn as evidenced by the recent losses they have taken after putting too many eggs in the SUV basket.  The evolution of the Mustang from 1964 to 1973 is a sad example of that kind of thinking.   Historically speaking, I believe we may look back on those regulations as the rules that forced the automakers to start putting some serious engineering into cars to make them better, cleaner and more fuel efficient.   Today’s V6 Toyota Camry gets close to 30 mpg, goes 0-60 in around seven seconds and has over 250 horsepower.   Perhaps that doesn’t seem too impressive by today’s standards but consider that same Camry would outperform a stock 1965 Mustang GT in just about every category which says a lot. 

   However, for those of us who had to live through the 70’s and the dreck that was peddled to us by Detroit still have bitter memories of poor performance, shoddy quality and half-baked ideas.  The Chevy Vega, Monza, Chevette, GM diesels and the ridiculous attempt at cylinder shutdown in Cadillacs come to mind as cars that will never be classics in any form.   Arguably the hottest…er…at least most popular car of that decade was the 1977 Pontiac Trans Am that was used in the Smokey and the Bandit movie.   This was a GM small block powered car that only put out about 165 horsepower.   While it may have looked sporty, it was anything but.  The performance in that car was so tepid that the makers of the movie actually had a modified 1955 Chevrolet ‘camera car’ drive alongside the ‘Bandit’ car to use it’s exhaust notes.  This was the same (one of three) car that Harrison Ford drove in ‘American Graffiti’ and James Taylor drove in ‘Two Lane Blacktop.’   A classic car for sure but anything but stock, particularly by 1970’s standards.  

  So I think we can agree that performance was dismal in the 1970’s and long-overdue and hastily implemented  emission controls were a big part of that.   However, I think this time around is a completely different story.   First off I believe that the judge was in the right to allow California to make it’s own requirements for regulating greenhouse gases.   Principally,  this is a states-right issue and as long as they are adhering to minimum federal government standards they should be allowed to do whatever they like.  Second, as an economy, California by itself is bigger than most countries in this world.  Auto manufacturers would bend over backwards to make their cars comply with standards that California mandated in order to be competitive in that market. 

    Most importantly however is the fact that there already is a standard for ‘Low Emissions Vehicles’ (LEV) and ‘Ultra Low Emissions Vehicles’ (ULEV) and a lot of cars out there already meet or exceed them.   Meeting this standard is not only a combination of fuel efficient and potentially smaller engines, but also ones that do a better job of burning the fuel they use.  It’s about building an engine smarter not just bigger and more powerful. 

     As the picture in AutoRamblings recent post on this topic clearly demonstrates, anyone who has lived in CA or even flown into LAX can plainly see that there is a serious pollution problem and something needs to be done.  I think this decision is a win-win-win for all of us.    It’s a win for state rights, it’s a win for California’s air quality and it’s a win for  all of us who will get better, cleaner and more fuel efficient cars as a result.

    Certainly there are extreme political groups in California that would like to ban all cars or go all electric but that would grind their economy to a halt and destroy the tax base so that’s not going to happen.   Also don’t forget that a lot of cars are built in California. That means good paying jobs that come with them.   This is an instance where I am trusting the legislators to strike a proper balance between the economy, the environment and the auto industry.  

By Lloyd Frazier

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I grew up in California.  I remember when California required smog control devices on automobiles starting in 1974.  They really started a few years before that, but I distinctly remember the 1974 models coming out with ‘Smog Pumps.’  It was a disaster for the auto manufacturers.  Several states started following California’s lead by passing their own smog control legislation.  Auto manufacturers scrambled to design systems that would comply with California’s law.  It took several model years before smog control was refined and did not take its toll on the performance and reliability of cars and light trucks.  Not very many memorable cars from the late 70’s are collectable partly because of those requirements.  If you want to restore a car from that era, you are better off placing a new crate engine with the latest technology under the hood.

Now, in 2007, a federal judge handed a major defeat to the auto industry by ruling that California can regulate greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles.  So what does this mean for the consumer?  Will we have another bout of badly engineered, quick fix, work-around’s until technology catches up?  Probably not.  The European Union set stricter CO2 standards and the automobile industry is quite healthy there.  The newest models of cars and trucks are pretty clean at the tailpipe.  There is a stumbling block, however.  Even though carbon content can be reduced through fuel blending and engine technologies, you still get a constant amount of carbon emission per gallon from the end result.  What California should really be saying is that it wants cars to be more fuel efficient.  Increased mileage is the real solution.  Adding more complexity to a cars engine to decrease CO2 from the same gallon of gas is ludicrous.  There are a lot of problems with CAFE standards, but it makes better sense than adding more junk under the hood.  Maybe this will be the final straw that pushes alternatives into the mainstream.  GM promises the Chevy Volt and Toyota is “toying” (excuse the play on words) with a plug in version of the Prius.  Several other manufacturers are also on the verge of breaking into mass manufacturing of electric vehicles.  Hydrogen technology is just around the corner, too.  Well, as the old adage goes:  As California goes, so goes the rest of the country.

Thanks for tuning in!